Mai Chau

From our hotel in the Old Quarter of Hanoi, we caught the small bus that travelled up to Mai Chau every day.  We were staying at a home stay so we were not too sure what to expect, we knew one thing we did request our own room with an indoor bathroom.  We don’t mind communal eating but sleeping…. not going to happen.

We stopped at the top of a hill for a photo op and to buy some fruits or vegetables.

This was the craziest shot; the cow had less than a metre between him and falling down the mountain side.  I turned away for a moment and he was gone, I actually went over to see if he had fallen, no, and he was nowhere in sight and this was not a large market where he could disappear, plus highway on one side and drop down hillside on the other???

Unfortunately the hills did not have rice growing in the fields and on the terraces, wrong time of the year.  There were little villages tucked into the hills and mountains, we would be driving along and you would see an opening with a small village tucked into the hillside.

This was a novel way to sell corn; we are always impressed at how the Cambodians and Vietnamese display their fruits and vegetables.

The rooster is very important, not only do they need him to keep the hens happy, but they use the rooster as an alarm clock.  They seemed to crow every two hours day and night, this is the way the villagers know when to get up, they never use a watch, much too expensive for one thing, and as the old saying goes, “If it ain’t broke don’t change it or fix it, something like that”.

This lady was shaving sugar cane.  It is quite good, very sweet; we saw carts selling sugar cane drinks.  Our guide told us they use ice and sugar cane and it is very refreshing in the heat.

Our boudoir, we also had a small deck at the back of our hut, the door you see takes you to our deck.

Front door and private bathroom with a shower.

View from our deck.

View from our deck, I took a few shots and then watched a family of geese for a while.

This lady is weeding; our guide went through the steps of caring for a rice field.  It is very hard work, and you need a large family or village to take care of the rice field.  They weed, can you imagine the weeds that are growing, fertilize and separate the plants and pick the rice.

This lady is fertilizing the field. 

I liked this picture of a Mom with her little guy tending the fields.

This type of butterfly flies from flower to flower like a humming bird, they wings move so fast I could only get a shot when it had landed on a flower.

The butterfly had a hard time finding live flowers in this garden.

These two started out having a good day eating and eating, and then the smaller one got too close to the geese.

So here begins the battle, dopey steer vs. very angry and aggressive gander, the goose did nothing just waited for the next move and honk of the gander.

I called this guy Eyore; he seemed to behave like Eyore, only he was missing a ribbon on his tail.  He was eating at this end of the meadow, as the male goose had shooed him away from the pond.

Back to the water, once the gander had shooed his foe away he brought his goose and goslings to the water for safety, honking the whole time.

This path beside the pond was used by the field workers and dogs; it was the way into the rice field from our home stay.  This crazy gander honked at anyone who walked across this path, the dog stopped once to look, but as the gander swam up, wings flared and honking at the top of his honker, the dog made a swift retreat back to the home stay.  We enjoyed gaggle of geese show.